If you own a small business and have invested your life savings in it, if it fails you are stuck to deal with the bills and costs of ending it. If you are the chief executive officer of a large corporation and it goes down the tubes, either the government steps in to help or you are given a multi-million-dollar golden parachute. And yet there are conservatives and right-wingers who tell you that they want to help small businesses by giving tax breaks to the richest 5% of Americans so miraculously this will help them.

Conversely, if you are an executive with a big corporation and your employees ask for improvement in working conditions, you may pull out and move to a more friendly state or foreign country. If you own a small business and are faced with shrinking sales you have the option of closing shop or cutting back staff and service to customers...perhaps bankruptcy.

Something is wrong with the economic climate we have constructed. Every corporation depends on customers buying their product, but none of them want to pay a living wage so people can buy products. The threat looming over American business and industry today is against the little guy and in favor of the big guy. This is democracy?

The American economy is built more and more on the U.S. consumer's spending. And at the same time, corporations and big business do everything possible to not pay a wage adequate enough to support a family and purchase products.

This conundrum is of our own making. Competing against American corporations are businesses in Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Finland, etc. Workers in those nations have national health insurance, earlier retirement, better retirement income, a more generous welfare system, etc. You are being sold a bill of goods that if corporations do not get what they want, they HAVE to move to India, Thailand, or some Third World nation where they can pay workers far less with many fewer benefits. That is simply pure and unadulterated garbage! The threat to move to these nations is to maximize greed profiteering off of the backs of workers. Succesful corporations in the above-listed nations can profit nicely and maintain the dignity of life for their workers.

Since 2001 things have gone a step further. If huge corporations fail because of their own mismanagement and for making lousy decisions, the federal government will use your money, the undercompensated American worker, to bail them out. First you are threatened by the corporation to leave the country if you do not accept the company's demands of you, and then when the company mismanages, your tax money compensates them for their mistakes. AND the executives who failed you and the company are given golden parachutes.

How about changing this around? How about developing an economy like the nations mentioned above, and have a general population healthier, more relaxed and not fearful of the future, national guranteed health care, earlier retirement, a far better welfare system, a longer life expectancy, etc.? And how about preventing CEOs from getting a golden parachute if the company fails? After all, that is what every small business executive is faced with constantly...bankruptcy with no parachute.

Yes, I know there has been some tweaking in recent years in Switzerland, Germany, France, etc. But the basic difference still exists, and basically those nations have people who live longer, live healthier, live happier, retire earlier, have a far better welfare system, etc. The difference between a worker in the U.S., and one in those nations is undeniable.

Conclusion: let's not be led around by greedy corporations in the U.S. who want to continue to convince you that they need special privileges, not available to successful corporations in other nations, and tax breaks, not available to successful corporations in other nations, and lower wages and benefits for workers, not true in other nations with successful corporations. One additional item: and be cautious when the U.S. starts a war; be sure it is a necessary one and not to profit corporations that are not only greedy corporations but are also war corporations.